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Author: Julian Crombie

This beautiful post was written by my husband. I am so glad he has shared this, as fathers of stillborn babies are so easily overlooked.

Have you ever experienced that moment in life where everything stops? That moment in between one heart beat and the next, where your whole life changes? Where life stops and time stands still?

It all happened about a year ago.

My wife had just finished giving birth to our beautiful little boy Theodore and at the very moment I laid eyes on him, the moment I held him: time stopped.

My heart exploded with love and then collapsed with pain and sorrow. He was so amazing, so beautiful, this was my boy; but he was not breathing, his heart was not pumping, he was still, as still as death.

Time stood still.

People came and went from our hospital room, meeting our little boy. But he could not meet them.

Time stood still.

We left the hospital. People coming and going, chatting and laughing; how has nothing changed? Does the world keep spinning?

Time stood still.

Back home at last. It is empty, there is no light, no chatter or laughter, there is no life. Our boy does not cry out, we do not hear him. All is silent.

Time stood still.

A small white coffin, a small plot of land, a small hole, our beautiful little son is lowered and buried. Why do we have to bury him? No one should have to bury their child.

Time stood still.

Assignments? Uni? Time passes around us. I stare at the blank screen. Why bother?

Time stood still.

Time has passed and slowly adjusted. I am no longer perpetually stuck in time, at the moment of my dead son’s birth.

However, there are still moments time stands still: when I see another father with his little boy(s), in the silent of the night, when no one is watching, when tears are shed. What would it have been like to play with them, teach them, love them and hold them tight, telling them that ‘I love you and always will’.